GENDER

sex, gender, sexuality

(noun) the properties that distinguish organisms on the basis of their reproductive roles; “she didn’t want to know the sex of the foetus”

gender, grammatical gender

(noun) a grammatical category in inflected languages governing the agreement between nouns and pronouns and adjectives; in some languages it is quite arbitrary but in Indo-European languages it is usually based on sex or animateness

Source: WordNet® 3.1


Etymology 1

Noun

gender (countable and uncountable, plural genders)

(obsolete) Class; kind. [14th-19th c.]

(grammar) A division of nouns and pronouns (and sometimes of other parts of speech) into masculine or feminine, and sometimes other categories like neuter or common, and animate or inanimate. [from 14th c.]

(now, sometimes proscribed) Sex (a category such as "male" or "female" into which sexually-reproducing organisms are divided on the basis of their reproductive roles in their species). [from 15th c.]

Identification as a man, a woman, or something else, and association with a (social) role or set of behavioral and cultural traits, clothing, etc; a category to which a person belongs on this basis. (Compare gender role, gender identity.) [from 20th c.]

(grammar) synonym of voice

(hardware) The quality which distinguishes connectors, which may be male (fitting into another connector) and female (having another connector fit into it), or genderless/androgynous (capable of fitting together with another connector of the same type). [from 20th c.]

Synonyms

• (grammar, of verbs): voice

• (biological sex): sex

• (class or kind): genre

Verb

gender (third-person singular simple present genders, present participle gendering, simple past and past participle gendered)

(sociology) To assign a gender to (a person); to perceive as having a gender; to address using terms (pronouns, nouns, adjectives...) that express a certain gender.

(sociology) To perceive (a thing) as having characteristics associated with a certain gender, or as having been authored by someone of a certain gender.

Etymology 2

Verb

gender (third-person singular simple present genders, present participle gendering, simple past and past participle gendered)

(archaic) To engender.

(archaic or obsolete) To breed.

Anagrams

• gerned

Source: Wiktionary


Gen"der, n. Etym: [OF. genre, gendre (with excrescent d.), F.genre, fr. L. genus, generis, birth, descent, race, kind, gender, fr. the root of genere, gignere, to beget, in pass., to be born, akin to E. kin. See Kin, and cf. Generate, Genre, Gentle, Genus.]

1. Kind; sort. [Obs.] "One gender of herbs." Shak.

2. Sex, male or female. [Obs. or Colloq.]

3. (Gram.)

Definition: A classification of nouns, primarily according to sex; and secondarily according to some fancied or imputed quality associated with sex. Gender is a grammatical distinction and applies to words only. Sex is natural distinction and applies to living objects. R. Morris.

Note: Adjectives and pronouns are said to vary in gender when the form is varied according to the gender of the words to which they refer.

Gen"der, v. t. [imp. & p. p. Gendered; p. pr. & vb. n. Gendering.] Etym: [OF. gendrer, fr. L. generare. See Gender, n.]

Definition: To beget; to engender.

Gen"der, v. i.

Definition: To copulate; to breed. [R.] Shak.

Source: Webster’s Unabridged Dictionary 1913 Edition



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Word of the Day

23 December 2024

QUANDONG

(noun) Australian tree having hard white timber and glossy green leaves with white flowers followed by one-seeded glossy blue fruit


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Coffee Trivia

The expression “coffee break” was first attested in 1952 in glossy magazine advertisements by the Pan-American Coffee Bureau.

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